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Hello new ghost story thread. I will have presents for you soon. Also that library pic is totally Army Man.
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Feb 10, 2015 04:21
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Hello friends. This one is a little long, and not as scary as others. Hope you all still enjoy it. De Aoiri The Shepherds After a long tale involving a debt owed to an brew master, we found ourselves in a small village to the north of Lough Beagh - what would have been a beautiful scene, except for the exceptionally rough terrain we had crossed. The north of the island was a terrible muddy mess this time of year, and the thin wheels of our cart cut into it easily and left deep ruts behind. It was a relief to reach the village - a small place with no sign, but called ‘Don Holland’ after a founder - and find that there was something of an inn. I had to sleep on the floor, but the benefit of being dry made it comfortable. The next morning we were treated to an honest breakfast of sausage and egg, and waited for the man we were supposed to meet. We had heard he returned every Friday for supplies, and as luck would have it we arrived perfectly - for we had only just slept Thursday off. So, my father lit his light morning tobacco and gossiped with gruff looking men who came in and out of the village. I have said before, it is always news when he arrives. I busied myself by exploring the single store, which sold everything in bulk and wrapped in brown paper, and noticed that from the outside of the village you could easily see a large mountain to the north. It was from this mountain that two large wagons were being pulled by stout draughts. Dragged, maybe. From this far away it was hard to tell, in my experience (and our muddy cart’s) it was a labor to move any weight in this quagmire. These carts reached us early in the day, I would guess around 10 (there were no clocks in this place), and as promised they brought the man we were supposed to speak to. An Andrew Vollen. He was a slender man with silver hair that stuck out from under a leather cap, and had a substantial nose that only comes with age. He was assisted by three younger men that he constantly cursed at. “A man in Ghurrick said you have a problem at the mine.” Said my father. “Aye, a little one. A bunch of poo poo, if you ask me. You know, for the weight of you two, I could carry another two days back.” said Vollen. “We have a horse, and are capable of pulling our own weight.” Said my father. Vollen took one look at our wretched pony - still exhausted from yesterday’s work - and laughed, thumbing us to the back. -------- “First time to - screw it all Lahn, do you lay your mother like that? - to Muckish Leah?” Yelled Vollen at us. The carts’ passage through mud was not particularly loud, but Vollen was a man who was constantly shouting over unheard things. At the moment he was shouting at Lahn, who was laying boards under the rear cart. “Yes, but I am familiar with it.” Said my father. “Aye, you and most people within sight - except for Lahn who doesn’t have a bloody eye in his skull. She’s gonna pop, Mucky is, you just give it 10 years and soon Satan and his children will be pulling quartz out of her.” Said Vollen. For clarity, I will leave out his further distractions. “I had heard some of it, is there money in it?” “It’s a wealth up there if your back can take it - open face piles just waiting for an opportunist.” “Or Satan?” said my father. “Ha! Mr. Steide beat Satan this time. Won’t be the first, I bet. Ain’t that right lads?” Vollen drummed the cart with his boot, and the men around laughed. -------- “What’s your price?” Asked Steide. He was managing to wear a clean black suit in the mud bath that was Muckish. Although, the mud had eventually given way to loose white and pink gravel. “Sir, you haven’t asked us for anything. What is wrong?” My father laughed and leaned back in his seat, a rough wooden thing that creaked beneath him. “Wrong? Who told you anything was wrong?” Steide raised an eyebrow. We were in a large hut with several benches, and men were coming in one by one. Near the end of the hut, a fat laughing man poured soup into bowls out of a sizeable iron oven. “Nothing wrong other than trying to beat last month’s numbers.” Although, at saying this, several of the men eating soup went quiet and stared at him. “Well...perhaps there has been an abnormality or two.” He whispered. The room went back to normal. “I’ll preface this by saying I don’t believe a word - not a mother’s word - of this nonsense. But, since I’ve lost two working employees to it, I’m happy to take it seriously. You see, Leah, there have been several incidents around here involving...umm...bells.” “Bells?” Asked my father. “Umm...yes...you see.” At this point the man who had been serving soup interjected, “Oh for gently caress sake Steide, let’s not drown the poor man in poo poo. Look - we have men coming back who say they’ve heard bells out in the fog - only - in the fog. Not a man here will swear he hasn’t. Tisn’t that right lads?” There was general agreement. “Now, many the man just been content to let them ring and come back to base in the fog. But about a month ago, some poor idiot - what was his name?” Someone answered ‘Warrand - god bless him’ - “Warrand, got it in his head to see what the bells were about. Never came back.” “He didn’t quit out?” Asked my father - the during the cook's speech he had dampened the inside of his pipe with some whiskey, packed and lit it. “Leave? Certainly not, was the day before pay, and not a man here who would leave with pending pay.” Answered Steide. “You mentioned this had taken two lives - what was the other?” Asked my father casually. Again, silence fell on the room and a man near the door left. “We uh...we don’t talk about him. Look, since then we have a simple rule. Isn’t that right, fellows?” Said Steide. “Never a man alone.” Answered the men in hushed tones. -------- “I’ll be honest.” Started my father. It was the next morning, and we were walking across the back of Muckish, heading north. “I haven’t a clue what to think. I have heard of several incidents of ‘The Bell of Saint Peter’ on mountains, but as far as I know, Saint Peter has never killed anyone.” “Perhaps he is getting tired of his rock?” I joked. My father chuckled - it was difficult to get him to laugh. Encouraged, I went on - “Multiple men seem to have heard it at the same time, and it has harmed people at least twice. So it doesn’t sound like a spirit?” “Very good. What else?” Said my father. We walked easily along the mountain’s back. The ground had turned from mud, to sand, to sporadic flat stones (which the locals called capall marfóirHorse Murderers ). The view was breathtaking, a green expanse that seemed to flow away from us in all directions, except to our right where the flat peak rose up. “They haven’t heard it in their camp, so whatever it is fears humans?” “Or is smart enough to not anger them. Tell me, what do you know of Muckish?” He asked. “Only that it is one of the Seven Sisters.” I replied, waving my hand at several nearby hills. “Only in modern times, my boy. When it was younger, it answered to the name An Mhucais - the corpse of Arduinna’s hunting boar. It has been a monument of the northern tribes since before written word.” “You told Vollen that you didn’t know much about it?” “No.” My father shook his finger at me, “I said I knew some of it. It always pays to show less than you know. And plus, Vollen didn’t strike me as the man interested in history.” ------- It had been three glorious, beautiful days. The sun shone and dried the earth, and every day we walked back to camp empty handed. I had never hoped for fog so much in my life. But, on the fourth day, we were granted relief. We sat together on a small trail, well used by thin mining carts, that overlooked the valley to the north. From here, we could see a bank of fog pouring in across the field. Already a preemptive mist hung above the few unnamed lakes and ponds below us - glowing pink and orange in the sunset. “We’d better hurry - it doesn’t look like it will make it this far up.” Said my father, as we gathered our things and descended. -------- The fog spilled in, and beneath it the breeze (which I hadn’t noticed) died, leaving an oppressive weight over me. My father had picked a wide, flat rock, maybe two and a half men high, which we had climbed on and sat comfortably. Behind us, the fog glowed blood red as the last wish of the sun fell beneath the hills. Then, we heard the bells. I would not call them bells - more like a ‘plink’ of two stones struck together. They were faint - very faint - but we heard them. They did not ring out once, as a bell, but rang several times in one spot and then went quiet. Then another spot. My father put out his pipe and made the hand signal for silence. Far away, the ‘plinks’ continued. There were many of them, spread out over a small distance. It was hard to tell, the fog scattered and muffled the sound. Over the course of many minutes, I noticed the bells moving in the distance. They appeared to be coming closer, but there was no fear in my heart. I was nearly thirteen at this time, and had seen many things. I did start to worry, however, when I looked at my father who faced his palms down to me - a sign to lay flat - and stretched out on the rock. I followed, and we waited. Closer the bells came. Then a smell...a stale, animal smell, settled on us in the still air. It was perhaps the image of animals that brought my attention to the sound of hooves coming. The bells were very close now. I could see movement in the fog - dark red in the last light of the sun. The scent was stronger now, perhaps the mustiness of a cellar. I will admit, at this point I was frightened by what looked like a flowing mass moving towards us, the bells were so close, but then the shapes realised themselves… Goats. A herd of goats wandered silently below us. I noticed immediately that something seemed wrong, though. There was a fetid smell to them, and many of them had wet, matted fur. They also behaved like they were sick, for many of them bumped into the rock or one another as they grazed past. All were thin enough to see their spine and ribs. I was so amazed by this strange sight that I had forgotten about the bells, which were now nearly under us. My father gripped my wrist, and I noticed a large figure emerge in the fog. This was no goat, but perhaps a man riding a long, lanky horse. A man draped in ragged cloth and beads, which clicked together gently as the horse walked along with the goats. The man - I will say a man, although he seemed much too tall - had a long staff that he carried in one hand. With one end, he gently nudged his flock along. On the other was what looked like a ball, the size of an outstretched hand, which emitted the bell noise. He would shake it above himself, and the goats would hurry ahead of him. He passed close underneath us, close enough that I could have reached out and touched the top of his staff, and at his closest I could hear him uttering what sounded like a terrible song - a song formed together by corse and harsh words, from no human mouth. I did not understand the words, but they reached into me... A picture formed in my mind, from this scene - around us, in the fog, must be a large flock of goats passing through the valley. Behind it, and on either side, were these shepherds. These last of a dead kind, who lived in dark places and starved. They had a caretaker once, a leader perhaps, who had left them long ago. Now they just survived; survived until they died. It was a calming thought. As they left, so too did the fog. My father, later, expressed that he did not believe that they had called the fog - but instead that they only came out in its safety. He said the goats behaved as if they were blind, and wondered if the riders were too. We did notice, after getting down from the rock, that the horse tracks were very peculiar. The hoof appeared to be completely split, and my father and I argued over whether this implied that the horse was rather a large, thin goat. These arguments continued as we made our way cautiously back to the camp. ------- In the end, Steide was not at all pleased with us. We had not “fixed the problem” as he put it, but said that if we suspected that the things lived in caves then they would should “plug their ears because we’ll start blasting once the open mines run dry”. The road away from the village was much easier than the road in - the ground had dried nicely. Perhaps it was also my want to remove myself from the affair, for the thought of a man driven by money destroying the last of an olden race pulled at my heart. My father, who was normally emotionless, was also quiet. I believe he felt the same hurt, for in a way, he was the last of his own small group - like the shepherds, being killed not by weapons, but by progress.
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Oct 24, 2015 04:07
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Thanks for the kind words everyone! I'm working on having another one up by Halloween, but I am on call this week and it is making the deadline tough to meet. I will try my hardest!RedMagus posted:Man, I love when you post your tales Tewbrainer. I always gush when you post, but it feels like they're tales from an old leather diary that you always meant to read when your grandfather was alive, but it's only now, that you're cleaning out his stuff, when you realize there was a world you just barely missed out knowing about. Blizzy_Cow posted:Yay tewbrainer story! You're welcome! My family is all story tellers, so I grew up with many of these stories. Some are written down, but most are word of mouth / drinking stories that have been passed along. [Warning - this might sound religious, but I'm just waxing historical]. These normally follow a structure, which could be called a 'Scealaris', or a 'Story of Again' - as in living again. These stories generally have names and places, but no dates. They are meant to allow someone in the afterlife to relive experiences, and the omission of dates is so they don't realize that they are dead during the story. This might sound familiar - as this belief finds its way into many Germanic structures, perhaps due to a similar familial history from the population of Britain and Western Europe. One classic example that you may have read in school is Beowulf - where 'fame' or the notion of having your story retold, is the key to eternal life. The changing of these stories is considered natural, because sometimes you might not want your family member to remember running away in the face of the enemy. Again, sorry that went a little deep, just giving background because... Khazar-khum posted:Thirding this. I love your stories. It's a shame you haven't tried to publish a book of them. Claiming a story as your own generally considered bad, because you are just reflecting it. If I did put up a book, I would just donate it (like Goonbumps). However, I am working on making a public doc of all my stories posted here (thanks to whoever bought me archives) and I will have it up after I filter through all my horrible crap posts. As always, anyone who reads them is free to post them wherever or retell them. Especially if it is around a camp fire. Let me know how it goes!
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Oct 28, 2015 03:41
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are these actually stories from your gramps or are you that good at story telling?